CHAPTER 1 Foundations of Physiological Psych 09 11 2013 Psychological subjects are explained best with physical materialistic concepts Replaced animistic animism notions belief that there are causal events that are not physical but spiritual All natural objects and the universe itself have souls Many notions in Psych are compatible with this For a long time the key concepts of why humans do what they do sprang from Philosophy and Theology and for a lot of our history Psychology studied spiritual perceptions The physiological point of view came from the loss of power in theology study of religion the loss of authority in the church during the Renaissance There was an emergence of a scientific revolution where people gave up on theological explanations to explain human nature and began to believe in the use of mathematics to study and measure reactions The Mind Body Problem A debate that s gone on for some time looking at what the best way is to explain psychological stuff Is it only mental that does not require physics and physiology and anatomy Or is it physical a physical process explained and understood best by looking at those more common sciences Books states there are two ways you can view the Mind Body Problem 1 Dualism Mind and body are separate but interacting There are both physical and mental constructs 2 Material Monism belief that the mind is just a property of the physical nervous system Physiological or factors to understanding the human mind Psychologists believe in this view Mentalistic Monism 3rd belief that the mind is the only thing Only the mental reality is important You can never know the reality of everyone else only yourself Most of us hold the belief that mind is related to physical body but there is something beyond physical stuff RENE DESCARTES 17 th Century Best known promoter of Dualism Popularized the notion of Dualism that there is a non physical spiritual mind that exists along with the body that is physical Believed in body and soul Known for trying to explain the key problem of dualism Believed there is a physical element that can be measured and there is also a spiritual element and you believe that the physical realm reflects the mental realm and mental effects physical Believed in interactionism combinations of reactions and interactions Used the notion of the ventricles the brain has hollow cavities full of cerebral spinal fluid that bathes the brain and he believed that the ventricles contained animal spirits a substance that s more ephemeral than gas which our ventricles were full of that could move instantaneously anywhere o He said the ventricles are connected to your muscles and when you decide to move the mind acts upon the pineal gland of the brain This was located between the ventricles and if the gland moves just a little bit it will open up pores that let out animal spirits that will go off to the muscles and make the whole body move o Didn t know how the brain made the pineal gland move He still didn t know how the mental and physical interacted His explanation is not convincing and thus psychology rejects Dualism His point of view was that there were important physical principles at work in the human body Neurophysiology was stimulated because of his work He learned about reflex reactions He used a baby putting its hand in a fire and knowing to pull away He believed that the interaction was purely mechanical The specifics weren t correct but the basic principle he promoted was correct o We have sensors that respond to heat in our brain and send back information that makes us pull back Pineal gland ideas did help us to explain more psychological stuff LUIGI GALVANI 18 th Century Believed in animal electricity He was a rich count with a lot of free time He made a series of revolutionary experiments In his day it was commonly held that Descartes was right but Galvani was stimulated by a concept of his day called animal electricity o Naturalists had found animals that generated electricity like skates and rays eels etc and eels had extremely powerful electrical currents People were intrigued that power like that found in lightning might exist in animals as well and Galvani wanted to know what that electricity did in the body animals o He used a very expensive electric generator made of plates of crystal or amber hooked to a central pivot point and connected to pads of wool Then the plate would be cranked up creating static electricity that you could then discharge With this he then began to see if there was electricity in o He d get a frog put it on a metal plate connect its spinal cord to a wire and connect the wire to a lightning rod He found that if you apply electricity to a nerve you have muscles contract even without ventricles Because of this he believed that electricity not animal spirits were at work in the nervous system JOHANNES MULLER 19 th Century He continued the notion that electricity was at work over animal spirits He was German and during his day physiology became a separate discipline He was the first professor of physiology and thus he was considered the founder of physiology He investigated sensory physiology which tries to describe the sensory systems that regulate our experiences Sensory experiences were subjective psychological interactions and psychologists He created the Law of Specific Nerve Energy the difference between our sensory systems is that they create different types of energy Sight and hearing for instance differ by the physical force of energy that s immediately got involved created o But this law is incorrect Senses differ because of place in the brain they are sent Still believed in Animism He believed that if you re trying to explain something alive you re dealing with a completely different system than something that is not alive He believed that living and nonliving things shared a lot of elements but he believed in a life spirit that made living and nonliving differ so nerves were not like wires for instance LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION For a very long time people tried to understand if the brain is important to everything in interactions then can we find out what parts of the brain are important to each specific action in our bodies FRANZ GALL 19 th Century Believed that there are very specific portions of the brain that can cause certain functions He believed in Phrenology bumps on the skull indicated skills associated with regions of the cortex because the size of sections of the brain that